Sylvie & Jenna
by Ashley Herring Blake
“This is our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us” ed. Katherine Locke & Nicole Melleby (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021)
More direct than Blake’s conceptual trilogy of queer MG novels, this tweenage short story achieves a remarkable degree of character empathy and worldbuilding within its thirty-three pages. A positive take on finding gender identity, and being secure enough to acknowledge past demons.